Apparently they are still making Mario Kart 8 courses?

Post 00014 | August 23rd, 2022

I haven't really been keeping up with Switch news lately. Sometimes you just reach "that's enough Nintendo for me for now, thanks" vibe, you know? The last thing I played was Pokémon Arceus when it came out. Pretty games keep coming out - Kirby, Live a Live, Xenoblade - but it's not like I'm starving for pretty games.

This drought ended this weekend however. I had just sat down in my comfy chair when I realised my Game Boy had run batteries. Seeing my Switch has charged all through Q2 of this year I decided to play that instead. That's when I saw the Mario Kart DLC in the eShop and got intrigued.

Waluigi Pinball is one of the highlights among new courses.
Of course, Waluigi Pinball has always been a joyride.

I guess they are celebrating the 8th anniversary of Mario Kart 8? There was an eight year span between Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario 64's Japanese launches, so it's kind of mind-boggling that we are still seeing content released for this game. In any case, I loved the game when it came out in 2014. I was one of the few people who bought a Wii U and I still think it was the best console of that generation; Nintendo's games were a breath of fresh air, bringing colourful 60 fps gameplay to a generation that was marred by muddy titles that were struggling to reach 30 frames.

Out of all the Wii U games, Mario Kart 8 is one of the titles that stand out. It was just bloody gorgeous! Varied selection of tracks, brassy soundtrack and colourful graphics along with a new anti-gravity mechanic that allowed for some pretty crazy courses. Add to that the DLC packs that came out a couple of years after that featured Zelda and Animal Crossing characters and courses. It was the perfect game for when you had friends over and was just as good online when it was re-released on the Switch, a console people actually bought. Admittedly, while the game still plays great, it was starting to get a bit long in the tooth.

That's why I jumped on the chance when I saw new DLC was out. The Booster Pack™ will drip-feed you forty-eight courses in six waves of eight. At this point we are at Wave 2, meaning a third of the courses have come out. Among the courses there are some that have been brought back from previous Mario Kart entries, some that come from mobile game Mario Kart Tour, as well as completely new tracks.

I spent more time downloading Tour than I did playing it, so at least to me these tracks are also new. Ironically, I find these to be the highlight of the new DLC. While Mario Kart levels are usually vaguely themed after desserts or characters from the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario Kart Tour instead made you race around big cities of the world. You'll be driving under the Eiffel Tower or kite-flying through the Sydney Opera House.

Inside the Opera House. The crowd is as two-dimensional as it looks. It looks even sillier in motion and provide an anticlimactic end to an otherwise polished course.

It doesn't seem like they were overly creative when they remastered the levels from the older Mario Karts however. While the remastered retro stages from the base game were eager to show off all the new mechanics Mario Kart 8 had to offer, the new ones included in the DLC only see changes to a varying degree; Sky Gardens, originally made for the GBA, has added a bit of depth to originally 2D stage as well as a brief kite-surfing section before the goal post while the N64 Kalamari Desert diverts you onto the railroad in the second lap. If I recall correctly, none of the classic tracks feature anti-gravity sections despite it being one of the main selling points of Mario Kart 8 when it was originally released.

Kalamari Desert has never looked better. The changed layout has also made it quite a bit shorter which is a welcome edit.

As for the completely new tracks, only two have been released so far: A ninja castle and an ice cream stage. The ninja castle is visually stunning but had some devious turns you'd have to have memorised in order to not crash. I would argue one of the reasons Mario Kart 8 is so well-suited for when you have friends over is the very intuitive courses so this seems like a strange decision. The ice cream is a lot more straight forward and entirely anti-gravity. It was pretty fun overall.

I do feel overall that Nintendo hasn't put the same amount of polish into these new courses as they did with the initial line-up. It feels like playing a romhack; It's a game I love so I'm glad to have more of it, especially as it was starting to feel a bit stale, but at times it doesn't reach the same level of quality as the original.

I would definitely pay good money to go see Donkey Kong the Musical.

All in all, if you want more, this is indeed more, but if you're happy with the base game, you don't have to go out of your way to buy the Booster Pack™. That said, all these photos are from the second wave as they were the most interesting stages by far. Only a third of the waves have been released so far so one might hope the last waves keep increasing in quality.